The first question of commercial hydroponics is : What is there a market for? It's one thing to grow it, another is to sell it. Typical hydroponic crops:
Lettuces
Mesclun Mixes
Herbs
Tomatoes
Cucumbers
Flowers

In your climate, where I suspect cheap produce is available year-round, you will need to find a niche that is looking for and willing to pay a premium price for premium products. Up-scale hotels and cruise ships come to mind. Also look for products which w=you can sell which are not being produced by anyone locally, for example is anybody producing arugula? Is there an expatriate community of Americans and Europeans who will pay a premium for knowing where and how their food is produced? There are growers in SE Asia supplying these type of communities through a weekly subscription.

The unit of measure you are looking to evaluate when you do your market research is $/sq. ft./month. You will need to calculate your yield in pounds per square foot per month (including seedling growout time). Then calculate the price you can sell it for in your market. This way you can estimate which crop is better for you. For example, when I started my latest greenhouse I had a choice of growing basil or growing chives. The price for chives was 50% higher than the price I could get for basil. But after you figure in a 12-week growout and 4 weeks between harvests vs. 6 weeks growout and 2 weeks between harvests, basil turned out to be the more profitable crop.

I recently found this site for hydroponic lettuce & tomato budget analysis & thought it might be of interest to you. It provides spreadsheets in Excel format. Read the information on macroÂs prior to opening them.

http://www.oardc.ohio-state.edu/hydroponics/Economics/economics.htm

Shiso would be a good crop to grow for the shushi trade. I did not see anyone growing it all the times I've been there. You will need lights above the plants. Long days keep it vegetative and short days will cause it to flower and die off.

Loapopo

You will also have to consider the amount of time you can put in your project. If you will be planting in Quezon City it will be too hot to grow lettuce and you will need a big area to be able to produce a profitable volume. Try growing cherry tomatoes (ill even buy them from you) or different kinds of herbs. Herbs fetch much much higher prices than lettuce.

i want to ask how much capital is needed in starting hydroponics. I live in quezon province we have one hectares of land.I want to maximize the use of our land by setting hydroponics farm. I hope you can give me an estimation of how much capital im going to need.

primo
Between a couple hundred dollars, and a couple million dollars. Greatly depending on all the variables involved, like crop, greenhouse (if one is even used), type of system, how the system is built, if you need any other buildings. Theirs even all the variables of doing business like business licenses, delivery trucks, insurance, computers to keep and make invoices, cash registers etc. etc. etc. etc. Start-up for a small simple system to grow some produce for a local farmers market could be as low as a couple hundred dollars, especially if you have some materials already. Start up for a large elaborate multi greenhouse operation with computer controlled climate control's, employees, building for produce sales and/or storage, distribution trucks etc. etc. etc. etc. could run over a million dollars. You can also do anything in-between.

For hydrononics need in Philippine , we are based in Philippine visit us at www.triplejmanufacturing.com

Here is a link that might be useful: Triple J Manufacturing

Hello just new and interested in doing hydroponics, just want to know what are the best crops and best place to do hydroponics here in the Philippines> I am based here in cavite and would probably put hydroponics in Pangasinan.

I have a sister in law in Singapore who is just getting started in hydroponics and upon a little searching it has become known that successful hydroponic farming and produce can be done in the hot tropics.
The first communication from Singapore was " there are no hydroponic vegetables etc in Singapore" Wrong Wrong Wrong. Have a look at this link that may give you an insight of what can be produced in the Philippines.
http://www.ohfarms.com.sg/

The more I read your post I understand where you are comimg from, I believe you have a niche market for people who are into organic gardening and many of my friends will pay the additional price to have these vegetables , herbs etc. I have been married to a Malaysian woman for 42 years and understand the Asian culture which is so different to the western way of life in particular the USA and Australia where I live.The Singapore model is a good one where I have visited on more than one occasion that welcome people to the farm to purchase fresh produce, as the western way of freezing or refrigerator stored vegetables , fish or meat , is not the Asian way. I believe if you introduce this method of Hydroponic gardening with Asian style produce in a small way then let it grow by market demand could be viable, letting local people know what you are growing and the benefits of hydroponic grown vegetables.
Like my own city which has sub tropical temperatures heaters or specially made glass houses would not be neccessary as we both can grow 12 months of the year outdoors. The only problem in the monsoon season is to have mesh covering or similar covering to protect from the torrential rain, I wish you every success and hope you will keep us posted as the method of hydroponic gardening you will be using.